Lloyd's may offer open-source indemnity (News.com) [LWN.net]

News.com reports that Lloyd's of London may soon underwrite open-source software against claims of intellectual property infringement. "John St. Clair, the chief operating officer of insurance firm Open Source Risk Management(OSRM), said on Friday that OSRM is working with "a number of" Lloyd's syndicates, which will start offering open-source insurance "within the next few months.""

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Lloyd's may offer open-source indemnity (News.com)

Posted Aug 15, 2005 21:15 UTC (Mon) by RMetz (guest, #27939) [Link] (4 responses)

Oh, this is HUGE! Lloyd's of London is one of the oldest, most respected firms in this industry. Their confidence in the low risks (low enough for them to safely insure) of using FOSS software alone will shut the mouths of those spewing FUD about the legal risks of our software. Chalk one up for the good guys.

Lloyd's may offer open-source indemnity (News.com)

Posted Aug 15, 2005 21:24 UTC (Mon) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]

Lloyds is not insuring this because of its low risk. Indeed, Lloyds insures many extremely risky activities, like space travel, motor racing, and arctic exploration. The only question Lloyds has to ask is how much they should charge to carry the risk.

Lloyd's may offer open-source indemnity (News.com)

Posted Aug 16, 2005 0:21 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (2 responses)

No, this isn't huge; Lloyd's will insure anything where the risk is quantifiable, although in some cases they'll charge more than the risk being insured against.

What would be huge is if the premiums asked were sufficiently low that a FOSS contractor could throw the insurance in as a freebie. At that point, said contractor can remind his potential clients of all the noise Microsoft has made around indemnification (carefully omitting those parts that make it a specific FOSS issue, leaving it as a software issue), and then point out that the insurance will protect them from these risks. With a bit of care and salesmanship, the clients are likely to believe that these risks go with all software, and insurance is a good idea regardless of provider. At this point, non-FOSS solution providers need to either get themselves an equivalent policy backed by Lloyd's, or convince clients that their choice of proprietary vendor (be it Microsoft or IBM) is as trustworthy an underwriter as Lloyd's.

Lloyd's may offer open-source indemnity (News.com)

Posted Aug 16, 2005 20:18 UTC (Tue) by RMetz (guest, #27939) [Link] (1 responses)

"John St. Clair, the chief operating officer of insurance firm Open Source Risk Management(OSRM), said on Friday that OSRM is working with "a number of" Lloyd's syndicates, which will start offering open-source insurance "within the next few months."

Do you really think that OSRM would be pushing to get this to happen if the premiums were going to be too high to improve on the present situation? I'm going to have to trust OSRM to know what they're doing, for now.

Lloyd's may offer open-source indemnity (News.com)

Posted Aug 17, 2005 7:26 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

If said insurance costs $300/machine and admin pairing/year (for example), it's not a significant improvement. Yes, it deals with the FUD (sure, we can insure you if you're worried), but it provides no counter-attack; at that price, it's a significant chunk of a contract (three servers with 5 potential admins costs you $4500/year to insure).

If, on the other hand, the insurance costs $300/admin/year, a contractor (who's the admin for several small businesses) can throw indemnification into their contracts as a freebie, and use Microsoft's own press releases and paid journalists against them in the bidding process. OK, the contracting firm may be paying $1500/year for the insurance, but if they contract their services to ten or twelve companies, that's only $150 or so per contract.

Lloyd's may offer open-source indemnity (News.com)

Posted Aug 16, 2005 0:33 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

someone should ask Lloyd's for a quote for microsoft software indemnity

Remember, OSRM fund defense lawyers, they don't cover losses

Posted Aug 16, 2005 11:05 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

I don't know about this Lloyds thing, but unless OSRM have changed strategy, the insurance pays for free software developers to defend themselves in court. It doesn't refund a developer's losses from a lost court case, and it doesn't pay for patent licenses.